Sebastian Moran had the bottom lip of a neurotic - dry, chapped, bleeding more often than not, with dark grooves where teeth had burrowed deep into the flesh.
He wasn't a neurotic, of course. Such a condition would be…well, certainly undesirable for someone in his position. Snipers were supposed to be cool, calm. Controlled. And, while on the job at least, Sebastian was all of the above.
But he did bite his lip. Repeatedly. At least 50 times a day, sometimes more, in the middle of any task, he'd sink his teeth into it, bearing down harder and harder until he tasted blood. He'd then lick it away, waiting until the ache had faded away and the wounds had healed to start anew, to bite and bleed and suck out all the savory salty pain.
Over and over.
Again and again.
Day after day.
It wasn't a nervous tic, but a ritual - a mindless, endless, self-imposed penance. Not that that was the extent of said penance, not at all. Behind closed doors he was much more thorough. But in public he had to be more subtle, and the background noise of his nightly escapades combined with the clear music of his daily ritual to create a sweet refrain of sweet, sweet pain.
But it was never enough. Never the same.
Back before it all, when he was there, it had been different. Glorious. They'd created masterpieces; he was the great artist, a maestro of suffering, and Sebastian was his instrument of choice. They'd play for hours, a thousand different melodies, and at the end of it all hewould collapse on top of him, panting, slick with sweat, his breathy whispers tickling Moran's neck. It was never "I love you," but "I need you," low and hungry and possessive.
"You're necessary, baby, you're sooooooo necessary."
And maybe he'd continue a bit more, all teeth and nails and hands gripping his neck and hands gripping his cock and roughness and pain, and then suddenly it would stop, and he would get up without a single word, and leave Moran alone in the darkness. And it was torture, simply torture, the most painful and the most exquisite torture he'd ever experienced.
But that was before. Before the fall. Before the day he'd returned to an empty flat, waiting for hours for no one to arrive. Before he'd woken up the next morning at the table with the mobile still in his hand, no new messages, and had skimmed through the paper to see the tiny article that no one cared about over the wild screams of the SUICIDE OF FAKE GENIUS. Before he'd read that tiny article, about the apparent murder of a small-time actor named Richard Brooke. Before his world had shattered into a million tiny pieces.
But he'd moved on. Forced himself to. He'd gathered up the pieces and clumsily stuck them back together, and although everything was irrevocably cracked and distorted it worked well enough. For now.
And he tried, every night, to recreate the old music. The grand symphonies of James Moriarty, consulting criminal, the Napolean of Crime. Every night he came closer. Maybe one day he'd perfect it. Or die. Either was fine, really.
And every day he'd bite his lip, time and time again, to remind himself. Not out of anxiety, as his occasional commissioners would joke. Not nervousness.
Nostalgia.
